Spiraling Out - Rev. Caroline Barnett

Everywhere we turn, human beings seek to define who is and who isn’t part of the community of God. But the promises that Christ embodies often go one step past what feels comfortable for us. Even the very human Jesus sometimes encounters this discomfort, as he did when he rejected the Canaanite woman. Fortunately, she believes so deeply in the promises of God that she refuses to allow human categories to keep her daughter from a miracle. There is an extended metaphor here, if we have eyes to see it, about God’s love being a spiral with no end, rather than a tightly drawn circle of who belongs and who does not. Our scripture reading is Matthew 15:10-28.

Our guest preacher Rev. Caroline Barnett is a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the PC(USA) and most recently served as the associate pastor/campus minister for First Presbyterian Church of Auburn, Alabama. She received her Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas and has a Bachelor of Arts in religion and anthropology from Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Before being ordained as a teaching elder, Caroline was ordained as a youth ruling elder by Village Church, an experience that informed her call to ministry. Caroline currently lives in Kansas City.